Pitchers with an attachable water filter are frequently used by consumers who wish to filter tap water before drinking or use. Typical filters couple to a reservoir that fixedly sits within the water pitcher. These reservoirs, however, are usually relatively small compared to the amount of space available within the pitcher for carrying purified water. If, however, the reservoir is enlarged to increase the unfiltered water capacity of the reservoir, the size of the filtered water space decreases. Thus, conventional water filtration pitchers require multiple fills of the reservoir to fill the volume of the filtered water reservoir, which is very time consuming, frustrating, and can take up to 15 minutes or more.
Frustration over the long wait time for fully filling a water pitcher, the small filtered water reservoir compared to the pitcher size, and the requirement to fill the unfiltered water reservoir multiple times to get a fully filled filtered water reservoir has existed since the first self-filtering water pitchers with the unfiltered water reservoirs were launched by Brita in the 1960s. Companies such as Brita, Pur and Camelback have all attempted to solve these problems in different ways, but each commercially viable attempt still suffers from one or more of the problems of requiring multiple fills, reduced filtering of contaminants, and slower fill or dispensing of water because the filtering is being done while filling or dispensing. Despite the inherent problems with the original Brita design with its small unfiltered water reservoir that requires multiple fills to filter water to the larger filtered water reservoir, that Brita pitcher design still remains the top selling self-filtering water pitcher in the world.